Four Weeks to Quit Quitting (Intro)

Quitting smoking is relatively hard. To keep on smoking is easy (but expensive and bad for your health).
Conversely, quitting the gym is easy. Sticking at it can be hard (and expensive), but it’s good for your health. It’s especially difficult for new members.

This year, we want to help your new members to stop quitting, and stick around as long as possible. We’ve got 8 quick tips to stop your members quitting this February. Each will take 30 seconds to read, will give you a simple KPI (Key Performance Indicator) and some actions that you can take straight away.

January is traditionally the month for high health club memberships sales. Clubs sign up most new members, shaping the business and cashflow for the rest of the year. But February is the month when it can all start to go wrong, if you don’t ensure all your new members are engaged.

We’re going to run through engagement processes for all members, not just January joiners, although they will be our focus. Also, these tips are not just for February, but now’s a good time to start. If you don’t do it now, when will you?

The psychology of the January gym joiner

Everyone knows that the fitness industry has its best month for new member sales in January. These new members are looking for a new start in the New Year, perhaps setting resolutions to get fit, shed the extra weight from the end of year eating and drinking excess, and get in shape for that (distant) summer holiday. 

Are you setting up your new members to fail?

January is a great time of year to get new members. Most people are eating more (we’re not talking about Christmas, it’s winter here in the UK, so it’s just natural to need more fuel). Many want a new start in the new year, everyone’s talking about fitness, and there are some unbelievable offers to join health clubs.

So, what do we recommend they do? We devalue the membership by giving a month free and/or no joining fee, and then tell them they need to visit 3 times a week!

Managing Customer Reviews (Sales & Retention Convention pt4)

We were honoured to have Wayne from Feefo present as our guest speaker at the Sales & Retention Convention. Wayne delivered a very educational half-hour talk on managing online reviews and how to improve your web presence.

We avoided the customary “if you’re not on social media, someone’s talking about you on social media” commentary. Instead, the presentation was packed with fascinating stats, for example:

• 83% of consumers are influenced by online reviews
• 75% of consumers expect to be able to feedback on their experience
• 25% of reviews on open platforms are fake

Get More Referrals, and Better Referrals (Sales & Retention Convention pt3)

Referrals have been a key topic at the last two Sales and Retention Conventions, for good reason. 45% of new memberships sales can come from direct member referral. So, the case for sales is obvious, but how do referrals help retention? 

Put simply, members who join with friends stay longer. If you reward your member for referring friends, and keep reminding them to refer, with more rewards, then members can get into the referral habit, as well as the exercise habit.

Member Surveys (Sales & Retention Convention pt2)

We’ve talked about surveys a few times on this blog (Engaging surveys for Gym Members, Member Surveys as a Retention Tool), so it was good to present a whole section on surveys at the Sales & Retention Convention.

There are lots of good rationales to run member surveys from getting insights and feedback, to scoring and improving your service, or just helping to tailor your member experience. Surveys are a great time and resource efficient way of having meaningful interactions with members. You’re not just sending them a message, but asking them to tell you what they think.

Member Retention Communications: Traditional vs Digital (Sales & Retention Convention pt1)

At last week's Sales & Retention Convention, Guy’s first presentation covered member retention communications. We discussed traditional comms channels (such as email, SMS and post), and digital channels (social media, blogs, vlogs, surveys and the web in general).

There’s clearly a big crossover between what we call traditional and digital, so another way to look at defining each is that traditional marketing is a push model, whereas digital is more pull. Members will receive traditional messages when you send (push) them out. Conversely, on digital channels such as social media, they will see content based on their likes, and previous comments and shares.

Sales & Retention Convention - Thanks

Thanks to everyone who came along to the Sales & Retention Convention last week. It was a great turnout with 40 people in the room from a wide range of leisure centres, gyms, and private clubs from all over the country.

One of the key themes was comparing traditional marketing with new digital trends and processes. A lot of ground was covered throughout the day, including lead generation, referrals, retention communications, surveys and reviews. Wayne Elliott from Feefo opened a lot of minds with the potential usage and pitfalls with online reviews, and how to build social trust. All the presentations linked sales and retention processes creating a joined-up approach for the fitness industry.

How to Make the Most from Make a Move - Part 2

The Technogym Make a Move challenge is a UK nationwide club challenge that encourages facilities using the MyWellness cloud to challenge their members to collect MOVEs. It is a team challenge, so it pits instructors against each other to find out which instructor team can collect the most MOVEs from 7th to 25th November.

If you missed the previous article about maximising your team, you can read it here.

Part 2 – Collecting MOVEs

You’ve got a whole bunch of members in your team now, but that’s no guarantee of collecting the most MOVEs. Here’s some quick tips on how to get up the nationwide leader-board and win the Skillmill:

How to Make the Most from Make a Move - Part 1

The Technogym Make a Move challenge is a UK nationwide club challenge that encourages facilities using the MyWellness cloud to challenge their members to collect MOVEs. It is a team challenge, so it pits instructors against each other to find out which instructor team can collect the most MOVEs from 7th to 25th November.

For motivation, there are 2 focuses on prizes. The winning team’s club will win a Skillmill, plus £500 in education vouchers. Although this will benefit the members at that club, there’s more prizes up for grabs for everyone who takes part. The top 20 participants nationwide will each win a Technogym goody-bag and training kit, plus online coaching and an Olympic training seminar. Finally, everyone who takes part will get fitter and healthier, and have more interaction with instructors, which will help them stay members for longer!

Part 1 – Collecting Members

So how to you get as many members to sign-up to your team? Here’s our top tips list for getting as many members involved in this (or any) challenge: